Survival Of The Richest
This'll sound callous: There's no utility left in lamenting the worsening trends in global inequality.
The situation is by now so absurd, and the political will to correct it so lacking, that mourning the injustice of it all is a waste of time.
New readers should note: I've wasted quite a bit of time in that regard. I'm the furthest thing from aloof. I wish it were possible to make a difference. But it's not.
Most relevant trends get worse every year. In a testament to how intractable those t
A couple of points.
One, you apparently have a plateauing of inequality in the last 8-10 years. Which sure doesn’t feel intuitive or likely given stock gains but the data is from https://realtimeinequality.org/ which should know what it’s talking about…
Two, rich people support higher taxation on rich people. I really want sources on that. Anecdotally, we have rich people (Gates, Buffett…) being quite vocal about this but they have to fight their own ilk (Koch brothers, Murdoch) and then they often want to stop at around a 50% marginal tax rate – when we need to let marginal tax rate rise to 90+% if we are to (re)create a society with a strong middle class…
Three – Maybe the solutions are technological, just like for climate change. People don’t change. The technologies do. If automated luxury communism become possible, it’ll probably be hard for society to resist adopting such a mode of production/distribution?
In this context a wage price spiral seems like a ‘way out.’ Even if nominal wealth were left unchanged (unlikely in the face of embedded inflation and tightening monetary policy) real wealth would fall. If wages (mostly) kept pace with inflation, the masses could be (mostly) unscathed.
In the US, I think the warning shot was Citizen’s United- this is a destroyer of representative democracy- ie Peter Thiel or Charles Koch. The rich want to be rich powerful and admired, they are asking a lot…
Extended periods of low interest rates have inflated the value of financial assets, which has been a primary contributor to this growth in inequality. As such, central banks are partially to blame.
Also, I am reminded of this simple illustration…1 million seconds is 11.6 days. 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years. It doesn’t suck to be a billionaire.
This video was made 12 years ago. Obviously, things haven’t gotten any better.
AIG Executive Talks
Jackie and Dunlap express America’s outrage over the AIG bonuses in their interview with one of the most hated men in America… Shimmysham the AIG Dummy.
This topic is near and dear to my heart. As long as the Citizens United decision stands the rich will buy enough politicians to keep the status quo. You are so right about this I don’t see it changing on my lifetime. The tax system has to change to a more progressive one with a max rate of 60% . Corporate governance has to be changed, buybacks should be illegal. I heard this weekend that the government have Musk initial loans to start Tesla. If you get a government loan then you should be required divest stockholding if you own greater than a 25% stake in your company. From my perspective if the billionaires want to move to Cyrus let them.
Why 60%? If wealth is distributed in an exponential fashion…
Part of the apathy (or most of it) probably stems from a feeling of being absolutely powerless to change this in any way…
Probably but I would also add the sense that “solutions” tend to be worse than the problem.
For example, no matter how disgusted I might be with the current system, I am not voting for a populist and I am very convinced that, if we (re)elect one, it’ll make things worse (Trump, Brexit being two pretty clear examples).
And while I like Bernie Sanders public persona, my problem with ex-communists or communist-leaning (like Melanchon in France) is that I suspect they’ll destroy or, more realistically, cripple our economies. Not something conducive to the long term betterment of the masses either…
I’d say it’s not a policy choice, it’s several policy choices by several different administrations over several decades. Humanity seems hell bent on destroying itself in whatever way it can.
Policy choices? I thought only wars and revolutions have historically been able to reset economic inequality